shattering completely as it struck the floor. Then he gathered up a handful of newspapers and stopped in the center of the room. “I don’t want to hear any more complaining.” He glared around the room. “We leave when I say.”
No one met his gaze. Feet shuffled, and someone said, “Sure, Jimmy.”
A few others nodded.
Most did not.
He walked back to Elena’s room, took the purse and closed the door. “I would like to leave, now,” she said.
“I know you would. I’m sorry. Tomorrow, perhaps.”
He tossed newspapers on the bed, and Elena saw a flash of headlines. Street warfare. Explosions. Gangsters. She saw photos of dead bodies, cops in assault gear. Jimmy saw her looking and said, “People are fighting over the old man’s scraps. A vacuum rushing to be filled.” He paused, eyes flat as he hooked a thumb toward the living room. “They think we should be in the city instead of here.”
“You don’t think so?”
“The scraps are meaningless. Most of Otto Kaitlin’s wealth is legitimate, now, and has been for years. Advertising. Modeling agencies. Car dealerships. He actually owned two beauty pageants when he died. Priceless. Can you believe it? Beauty pageants. Otto Kaitlin.”
“Why don’t you just tell them that?”
“Because they’re children.”
He sat on the bed, opened her purse and began removing the contents. He placed each item on the bed, a long line of things side by side. A hairbrush and makeup. Passport. Wallet. Keys. Gum. A few loose receipts. “You can tell so much about a woman by what she carries in her purse. Although, in your case, it’s more about what you don’t carry.” He rummaged more deeply in the purse. “No cigarettes or pill bottles. No booze. No mace. No contraception. No address book. No photographs.” He straightened the items, touching each. “Such a minimalist.”
He removed her cell phone. “But this…” He flipped it open, scrolled through the phone log. “Not many calls the past week. A few women, looks like. Michael, mostly. The restaurant.” He pursed his lips in what Elena knew immediately to be false surprise. “You have texts from Michael.” He flashed the phone in her direction. “Want to see?”
Elena did not rise to the bait.
Jimmy shrugged, then scrolled through the texts. “Call me. Where are you? I’m sorry. Blah blah. Very domestic.”
“What do you want?”
“You have four new messages from Michael. I’d like to hear them.” He waited. “To do that, I need the password.”
“Why do you care?”
“I just do.”
He smiled, but she saw the same insanity from before. Whatever his obsession with Michael, whether fear or pride or something deeper, it was complete. She gave him the password, and his mouth opened as he dialed voice mail. “Ah.” He held up a hand, and whispered, “There you are…”
His voice fell off.
His eyes drifted shut as he listened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
When Michael got back to the car, Abigail looked shaken. “I’ve been online.” She held up her BlackBerry. “Every major outlet has the story.”
“Anything solid?”
“Police presence at the estate. A body found. Some of the bigger outlets are running bits about Christina’s death eighteen years ago. One has a chopper over the estate. You can see boats on the lake, police cars at the boathouse.”
“Has anyone mentioned Julian?”
“Only that he was a suspect last time. But they’re showing his picture. They’re leaving the implication out there.”
“Your friend Jacobsen made that happen. They’re trying to force him out, shame him into facing their questions. Typical cops.”
“They’ll drag him through the mud, won’t they?”
“Drag him. Trample him. Cops are all about pressure points.” Michael glanced at Ronnie’s house, then started the engine. It was a few minutes after five. The sun would be down in three hours. “Let’s get out of here.”
They rolled off Ronnie Saints’s street; neither of them looked back. Abigail sank into her seat and asked, “What did you find out?”
Michael said nothing. He was thinking.
“Michael?”
He turned right, and the road opened up. Another turn and they were out of residential, two lanes gone to four, light industrial dotting the roadside. He was thinking of Julian and Abigail Vane, of the things he’d learned, and of the names on that piece of paper. He didn’t know exactly where he was, not on a map, but the sun was setting and he planned to follow it down.
“Iron Mountain is west?”
She nodded, looked at him oddly. “What happened in there, Michael?”
Michael gave her a look that he knew was equally strange. They’d been allies, but things felt different, and Michael had to get his head around that fact. He had to interpret, and decide. So, he kept silent as the car slid from the shadow of a wooded peak into a burst of flat, yellow sun. He put his eyes back on the road as Abigail glanced at the navigational system and cleared her throat.
“We’ll go right a few miles up, then straight for ten miles. After that, it gets complicated.”
“How?”
“Back roads and deep woods. No major roads go from here to Iron Mountain.”
“How long?”
“Forty miles, but it gets bendy. Maybe an hour and a half.”
“Okay.”
“Are we going to Iron Mountain, Michael? And if we are…” She struggled with the very concept. “Can you please tell me, why?”
He considered how much to say, and the order in which to say it. It was no small thing, this collision of past and present, so he spoke with caution. He told her of Ronnie’s girlfriend, and of Andrew Flint. He told her about the box of cash, and then about Billy Walker, Chase Johnson and George Nichols. “Hennessey, Ronnie Saints and those three. They’re the ones that ruined Julian’s life.”
“I remember Andrew Flint,” she said. “A nervous man to have such responsibility. He seemed in over his head but eager to do better things.”
“And the others? Walker? Johnson? Nichols?”
“I know who they are.”
Her voice was brittle, unforgiving, and Michael knew she’d heard stories of the things those boys had done. There was too much anger in her voice, too much bitter feeling. Julian had told. He’d painted pictures with his words, and with the ink of his eyes. He’d opened up and let her see the pain, because Julian, Michael knew, was the kind of boy who had to share. His strength was in the goodwill of others, in strong, knowing hands and souls that had not broken so young.
“What are you not telling me?” she asked.
Michael drove as Asheville fell away and the road twisted higher into the mountains.
“Michael?”
